STOCK FEI-DING. 169 



STOCK-FEEDING AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE FERTILITY 



OF THE FARM. 



By B. "VV. McKeen, Member for Oxford Count j. 



It has often been said, that it required no brains to farm upon a 

 virgin soil whose stores of fertility only needed the presence of the 

 seed to show themselves in abundant crops that well repaid 

 the husbandman, and seemed to warrant a better treatment than 

 wanton tillage. Our forefathers, careful, prudent men in most 

 respects, utterly failed to see the necessity of returning any of this 

 natural fertility, but kept up a system of exhaustive cropping, until 

 their lands, robbed of the valuable contents of nature's storehouse, 

 failed to yield any return, just as a bank refuses to honor drafts 

 made upon it by parties who have overdrawn their deposits. 



These lands are now in our possession, and we must look the 

 matter fully in the face, and meet the difficulty of reclaiming them 

 like men. Chemistry comes in with commercial fertilizers that help 

 out the process, but the main reliance of the average farmers 

 throughout the State, must be from manures obtained b}- a ju- 

 dicious system of stock-feeding Therefore the best methods of 

 feeding and care, such as will return the most to the soil and at the 

 same time pay a fair measure of profit, must be carefully studied to 

 the end that we may add fertility to our fields, comfort to our 

 homes, and lay l»y something as an investment. Neither should 

 stock feeding be conducted oni}' wi.h a view of enriching our farms, 

 but in all its bearings, realizing that stock husbandry is, and must 

 always remain the foundation groundwork and first great principle 

 of New England Agriculture. Therefore the objects of stock-feed- 

 ing on our farms are threefold. 



First — As a means of maintaining and renewing the fertility of 

 the farm. 



Second — As a source of providing for the necessities of our families 

 and increasing the food supply of the farm. • 



Third — As a source of income from the sales of animals and their 

 products. 



In order to secure the first object, to the consideration of which 

 this paper will be largely devoted, it becomes necessary to use a 



